A Cosmic Kind of Love(24)
I barely had time to register the move before my friend shoved Alison’s head with enough force to send her flying into the pool. Alison’s shriek sliced through the music and then abruptly silenced as she fell through the water, sending it cascading over anyone near her.
Thankfully, she hadn’t hit anyone as she went in.
Gaping, struggling desperately to stifle my laughter (her friends were not so kind) I watched as she popped up for air, her mascara now all over her face. “What the hell? I was trying to keep my hair dry!” she screamed at Althea.
My friend glowered down at her. “No nasty little Veruca Salt wannabe talks to my friend like that. You’re lucky all I did was push you into a pool.”
* * *
“And that is why Althea will forever be my hero.” I practically cackled into the camera. “I try to be compassionate—especially after what Miranda let slip about Alison’s dad—but that girl has a mean streak. Hopefully she grows out of it. Althea shut her up for a while, at least. I think too many people have excused her behavior over her dad’s neglect and her parents’ divorce until now. The only thing I wish was that it had been me who shoved her in the pool. But, shh, don’t tell anyone I said that.”
My phone chimed, and usually I’d ignore it while I was recording my video diary, but it had binged a few times already. With a sigh, I reached across the couch for it.
I had a bunch of social media notifications.
Dread filled me as I opened up the app.
Someone had tagged me in a video.
Another one with my mom. She was with Jenna, the instigator. I watched a little of it and then scrolled through the comments.
“Oh my God.” I looked up from my phone at the camera. “I’ve just been tagged in a video uploaded online of my mom frenching some guy half her age at a club.” Embarrassment was the least of my emotions. Jenna had posted it, but my mom had clearly given her the okay because Mom had commented on it! She and Jenna were joking back and forth about her being a cougar. “It just reeks of desperation.” My earlier amusement over Althea, Alison, and the pool died. “And that’s the truth. I go to a pool party for my dad’s new, younger girlfriend’s daughter’s birthday . . . so Mom goes out, finds a guy barely out of college, and not only makes out with him but also makes sure everyone knows she made out with him. If I thought for a second she was doing this because it truly made her happy, I’d try to get over my embarrassment. But that’s not having a good time.” I waved the phone at my computer screen. “My mom is hiding how devastated she is. How hurt. And the worst part is that it’s kind of her own fault. She—” My chest ached so badly for her. “She broke her own heart and she broke my dad’s . . . and now I’m caught in the middle. Every step I take to make this mess better somehow just ends up making it worse.”
TEN
Chris
I remember on my first space walk how I felt encompassed in an ocean of stars despite their distance from the station. There’s no way to describe the endlessness. And I remember thinking how poets talked all the time about the connection between stars and fate. I never really believed in that stuff. Standing among them, the universe a never-ending dark velvet blanket sewn with these stars that glittered like diamonds, I saw the beauty and I saw the science. Never the philosophy.
Yet, I began to wonder now. How my video letters ended up in Hallie’s hands. How I felt strangely drawn to her through the ones she sent to me.
And now this.
A week ago, for no apparent reason, other than I didn’t know what else to do, I sat down at my aunt’s laptop to type up a list of pros and cons of the jobs open to me. Notes, thoughts just poured from my fingers. But not about that. About my time on the ISS, training for NASA. Then I began working backward, sorting out my emotions about the air force and following in my big brother’s footsteps. Taking up the mantle of his dream to become an astronaut. I went back even further, to growing up in a very white, privileged world as a mixed-race kid with no connection to his Mexican heritage, who dealt with less racism and bias than other Mexican American kids but still experienced it. And how I felt “other” in the world I grew up in but also so disconnected from any Mexican identity that I felt “other” within the Latinx community. How I never really felt like I fit anywhere. How it was the thing that bonded Miguel and me beyond mere brotherhood.
Me. Writing.
I wasn’t a writer.
But there was therapy in it, in getting all the thoughts in my head out on paper and making sense of them.
Never in a million years did I expect a phone call from NASA that morning. When I saw it was a Houston number, I answered.
“Captain Christopher Ortiz?” an unfamiliar female voice said.
“Yes, speaking.”
“Captain Ortiz, this is Aleema Ayad from NASA’s media relations department. We’ve had inquiries from several publishers interested in the opportunity to work with you. They rarely reach out like this, but because of your large online following and the media interest around you, the publisher thinks your already significant audience makes you the ideal candidate for an autobiography. NASA agrees it would be a wonderful opportunity for you to continue to promote the program.”
I was stunned.